The new VMware cloud credit purchasing program is aimed at helping solution providers partner with cloud service providers to offer their customers public or hybrid public/private cloud services, said Geoff Waters, senior director for VMware's cloud service provider program.

Customers can purchase the prepaid credits from their solution provider and exchange them to get access to Infrastructure-as-a-Service services from a cloud provider, Waters said. Because customers purchase the cloud credits from their preferred solution provider, that solution provider then gets up-front revenue for public and hybrid clouds, Waters said.

Solution providers also can expand their product portfolio by partnering with cloud service providers and offer cloud assessments, budget assessments, deployment services and public cloud workload consulting, he said.

For business users, the advantage of using the prepaid cloud credits comes from the ability to access cloud services when needed, Waters said.

"For example, a user may need a test-dev cloud on Tuesday, but IT may not have been approved to acquire the resources," he said. "By purchasing credits, they can use the credits to get their cloud capacity on Tuesday."

The cloud credits can be used to purchase IaaS capacity from 12 cloud service providers currently, with 40 cloud service providers expected to be part of the cloud credit program by the end of 2013, Waters said.

"All of them are vCloud-powered or vCloud datacenter services providers," he said. "All are premier partners and have solution provider programs. We want to marry the two partner types."

XChange Solution Provider 2015 is finally upon us and the timing couldn't be better. The premier channel event is happening March 1-3 in Dallas, bringing together 225 solution provider decision makers from across North America. CRN is at the event to provide news, analysis and a firsthand take from partners.